Saving the Baylor brand name

WACO, Texas -- Looking out his window, athletic director Ian McCaw has been watching workers tear up the turf in Baylor University's football stadium one more time.

The environment is brutal in there, and not just because the Bears play Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and other Big 12 powers. Central Texas offers searing heat and then its share of ice. Since 1950, Baylor has tried grass, various brands of fake grass, real grass again and now Prestige System artificial turf.

"We're committed to making changes," said McCaw, a young sports management professional who arrived in the midst of Baylor's recent siege of scandals and woe. "We're moving forward. We think this is going to work out fine."

McCaw was talking about the grass, but he could have been defending his own turf. The environment has been brutal for months, with the world's largest Baptist school facing a searing media spotlight and the cold reality that when many fans hear "Baylor" they now think of death, drugs and dirty dollars, not dedication to Christian principles.

Surely the grass was greener at the University of Massachusetts, where McCaw had done his graduate studies and returned to direct a 23-sport athletic program. But after one successful year, and two weeks before moving his wife and four children into a newly constructed home, he answered the call to help resurrect Baylor's reputation.

"From a branding, marketing standpoint, we know what we have to do," he said. "We have to position ourselves to the whole Baptist and Protestant community as the flagship, much as Notre Dame always has been for Catholics. ... To compete at the highest level, we're going to have to have that kind of brand.

"We certainly can't try to hide what Baylor is, or what Baylor is supposed to be."

But that brand name also raises questions in an era when schools with small markets and high academic standards face brutal pressures to cut corners. Meanwhile, this is a boom time for Christian colleges and universities, along with their athletic programs. Many are now asking: What does it mean to have "Christian" athletics?

It doesn't mean all of the school's athletes have to be Christians, said Grant Teaff, a Baylor coaching legend and, for the past decade, executive director of the American Football Coaches Association. But dedicated Christian coaches are a must.

"You can't say, 'Find me the best Christian defensive back you can and go sign him.' You can't compete like that," he said. "But that doesn't mean that, if one of the top defensive backs in the country is a strong Christian kid, you can't look him in the eye and tell him Baylor is where he would feel right at home."

It's also time for these coaches to admit that larger schools will sign almost all the top blue-chip recruits. However, Teaff noted that most of these phenoms -- in basketball and perhaps soon in football -- linger only one or two years in college. At some point, teams led by experienced, loyal juniors and seniors may start winning more games against the freshmen and sophomore superstars.

"The world says to these young men, 'Get as much as you can as soon as you can. Get your hand out -- right now,' " said Teaff. "Schools like Baylor can't compete in that game. ... But a school like this has other strengths and it can't be afraid to use them."

Schools that emphasize academics and spiritual values will also need stronger ties to national networks of ministries, home-school families and Christian high schools that stress athletics, noted McCaw. The evidence is strong that schools emphasizing faith are especially attractive to top female athletes.

Another trend may help. As Third World churches grow in power, global recruiting efforts will increasingly affect sports such as soccer, track, baseball and basketball. Missionaries often packed sports equipment with their Bibles.

But earning the trust of parents remains the key.

"There is a growing percentage of parents that want their children to go to a Christian college, yet they also want to see their children compete in Division I athletics. If you want a quality, Christian education and you want to compete at the highest level in athletics, how many options do you have? Where are you going to go?"

The Passion according to Judas

It's hard to watch Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" without concluding that the suicidal Judas Iscariot was chased by demons into the pit of hell.

On the other hand, it's hard to watch the ABC television movie "Judas" without concluding that somehow, before he hanged himself, his sense of remorse put him back on the road to redemption.

These movies offer radically different takes on the Passion and events that led to it. While Gibson has been attacked for his stark, traditional Catholicism, "Judas" (March 8, 9 p.m. EST) offers a modern, made-for-television, post-Vatican II Catholic approach.

"It's hard to have your little movie compared to a $25 million epic by an Academy Award winner," said Charles Robert Carner, who directed "Judas" when it was filmed back in the summer of 2001. "We don't want people to see this as some kind of cheesy TV rip-off of this big movie. ...

"We did our thing long before anybody knew Mel Gibson was making the Passion. We're just thankful that our movie finally has a chance to be seen."

Produced by the Catholic media pioneers at Paulist Productions, "Judas" began nearly a decade ago as one of the final projects of the late Rev. Ellwood "Bud" Kieser, founder of the Humanitas Prize. The goal was to create a miniseries called "Jesus and Company," which would tell the same story a number of times, only seen through the eyes of characters such as Peter, Mary Magdalene, Judas and others. In the end, only "Judas" became a reality.

The movie was shot in only 23 days in Morocco with a $5 million budget. The 106-page script came from executive producer Tom Fontana, who is best known for his gritty work in crime dramas such as "Oz" and "Homicide: Life on the Streets."

"Judas" was supposed to have aired during the Easter season in 2002.

"The movie is coming out now because of 'The Passion' and all of the publicity it has generated," said the Rev. Frank Desiderio, president of Paulist Productions. "Our movie deals with some of the same material, but in a very different way. We would like to bring more light, rather than heat, to some of the issues that are being discussed."

"Judas" opens with a crucifixion, only the man on the cross is one of hundreds of Jews being executed by the Romans. The man is Judas' father and this event plants a fierce hatred of the "Roman bloodsuckers" in the heart of his young son. Judas grows up to become a bitter urban rebel and his anti-establishment anger prevents him from grasping the peaceful, sacrificial message of Jesus.

The goal was to look traditional and sound contemporary. Jesus is shown performing miracles that literally take place onscreen, while speaking in modern, even chatty, language. Some viewers and critics may find it jarring, but the "Judas" team did this intentionally.

Desiderio is also unapologetic about the movie's hopeful ending.

Judas, of course, hangs himself in a fit of guilt, despair and madness.

Still, the voice of Jesus is heard in a flashback, telling Judas: "I want you to spend eternity with me _ with my father. It's not too late. It's never too late."

Later, Peter and two apostles pray over the traitor's lifeless body, because that is what Jesus would have wanted them to do.

So did Judas go to heaven? This may seem like a radical idea, said Desiderio. But it's a logical question for modern Catholics.

"Without that flashback, I would never have made the movie," said the priest. "That's the point. It's never too late. That's the message to Judas and to each and every one of us. ... The Catholic Church teaches that there is a hell, but we don't know if anyone is in it. Only God knows if Judas was somehow able to repent and find forgiveness.

"That is what this movie is saying: It's never too late to turn back to God."

Conservative thumbs down for 'Passion'

Classics scholar John Granger will not be joining the throngs of other Christian conservatives as they pack theaters to witness "The Passion of the Christ."

Why not? Granger answers with four words: "Gone With the Wind."

Think about it, he said. Long ago, this best seller was devoured by legions of devoted readers. Then it was made into a Hollywood blockbuster, with Rhett Butler played by the charismatic Clark Gable. The film ruled.

"Ask yourself, after reading this 900-page novel, what your mental picture of Rhett Butler is," said Granger, an Orthodox Christian best known for his "Harry Potter" critiques. "If he does not look like Clark Gable, you are a remarkable reader. If you are that rare bird who has read the book and not seen the movie, write down what you see with your mind's eye when you hear the name 'Rhett Butler.' Then see the film.

"Now repeat the previous test. Is Rhett looking a lot like Clark?"

In other words, Granger is worried that images from Mel Gibson's cathartic epic will replace -- in the memories of many devout Christians -- those handed down through scripture, prayers, music, poems, icons and two millennia of holy tradition.

Yes, the vivid, violent visions of this film may grip the imaginations of many who know little or nothing about the faith. But something will be lost, as well as gained.

"I value very much the relationship I have with the Christians who have come before my time," said Granger. "I know that if I see Gibson's movie that I will never understand the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ as they did, which is to say, from reading the scriptural accounts, by experiencing these events liturgically and in hearing about the life and death of Christ as church and elders explain it."

Granger is not alone in these concerns. French Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger recently said that he worries about all attempts to film the Passion, because this art form "can be very ambiguous."

The cardinal told reporters that pious devotional practices, such as the prayers and rituals of the Stations of the Cross, are different because the faithful actively take part, rather than merely "sitting in an armchair." As a rule, he added, "I prefer the icon to a photo of an actor playing Christ and I prefer the Blessed Sacrament to any icon."

The conservative Catholic journalist Philip Lawler has reached the same conclusion. While many Christian leaders believe "The Passion of the Christ" will be an effective tool for evangelism, he said he not sure it is wise to focus these efforts on such a raw, emotional version of the Christian faith. After the tears are dry, will anything remain other than bloody images of torture and death?

"The graphic display of violence can have a destructive effect on viewers who are unbalanced or immature," said Lawler, editor of Catholic World Report. In addition to adults, "theater audiences will ... include impressionable youngsters and teenagers who have been formed by Hollywood to revel in the display of gore. I worry how this film might affect them."

The sad reality is that these young viewers may be precisely the audience Gibson was trying to reach, said Bishop Savas, chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. He attended a summer screening of an early cut and discussed some of his concerns with the director.

It is almost impossible to view this movie without seeing that it is rooted in Gibson's faith and devotion to traditional forms of Roman Catholic worship and prayer, said the 46-year-old bishop. Yet these elements have been fused with the lessons he has learned in the Hollywood marketplace.

Gibson knows how to get inside a modern viewer's head and shake things up.

"Mel Gibson is trying to find a way to pierce the emotional hides of people -- especially the young -- who have become callous from years of overexposure to the violence that permeates our media today," said the bishop.

"Now I am not squeamish about these kinds of things. ... I know what the violence in this story is supposed to mean. I know what the symbolism means. I can see what he was trying to do. But I still have to ask: Did he really need to go this far?"

The Mystery Worshippers are out there

It is a sight that British vicars fear more than an empty collection plate.

The business card is deposited anonymously with the loose bills and change at the offertory. It states: "You have been visited by the Mystery Worshipper." This means a detailed review of their church will soon be posted for all the world to see at the humor site www.Ship-of-Fools.com.

Were the pews comfortable? Was the service "stiff-upper-lip, happy-clappy, or what?" How was the preaching, on a scale of 10? Was the coffee good? Did any part of the service offer a glimpse of heaven? How about a whiff of "the other place?"

Mystery Worshippers have, during the past six years, slipped unannounced into 750 pews in England, North America and, occasionally, more exotic locales.

On the pop side of the aisle, one critic in Ohio survived a Christianized version of the racy Ricky Martin hit "Livin' La Vida Loca" -- at Easter. Video clips from "The Matrix" spiced up the service.

Meanwhile, the incense swingers at St. John Chrysostom in Manchester, England, received top marks: "The thurifer was superb and was of the standard that made even the most complex of swings and twirls look smooth and effortless. ... I have to say that more perfume and less fog would be my personal taste." Ah, but the wine was thin.

Ship of Fools has corned the market on truth-is-stranger-than-fiction ecclesiastical silliness -- from "Signs and Blunders" to the "Fruitcake Zone."

Recent offerings in the "Gadgets for God" pages -- real items sold elsewhere -- included boxer shorts covered with crosses, but with the fly sewn shut. Other links yielded bobble-head dolls of the Blessed Virgin Mary and flashing cell-phone crucifix covers. In one "church organists behaving badly" report, a Scottish musician was caught playing "Send in the Clowns" as the elders processed. A Brooklyn organist snuck a few bars of "Roll Out the Barrel" into the funeral of a popular pub patron.

But the long-running "Mystery Worshipper" feature is a clue that the site has a serious side, said editor Simon Jenkins. The goal is to reach out to "people on the fringes" who are either fleeing the church or just starting the process of investigating the faith. Almost everyone knows what it is like to be a stranger in a pew.

"There is no shortage of Mystery Worshippers," Jenkins said, during a U.S. speaking tour that included a stop last week at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Charlotte, N.C.

"I think one reason so many people volunteer to do this is that everyone can identify with the whole process of visiting a new church. Church shopping is such a pain and it kind of helps to laugh. We know what people are going through."

For many Mystery Worshippers the most challenging part of the review process is its requirement that they test the degree to which each church welcomes strangers. The instructions are clear. At the end of the service, they are asked to stand alone in the back of the church for five minutes -- looking sad and lonely. The goal is to count the number of people who approach them to chat.

Nearly 50 percent of the time, the answer is "zero."

"Clergy dread this part of our reports," said Jenkins. "It is sad to have to see the church like that. But it can be good, too. ... Like it or not, this is a chance to see what their churches really look like to those who are on the outside."

Year after year, the "friendliness factor" is the bad news. The good news, said co-editor Steve Goddard, is that the online form's request for "heavenly moments" in worship almost always leads to results.

This is not a matter of old churches vs. new, or big vs. small.

"I think the good news is that there are genuinely spine-tingling moments of spirituality happening in pews out there," said Goddard. "It doesn't matter if it's a smells-and-bells church or a rock-the-flock church. We get reports from people who find a sense of worship in all kinds of places.

"What matters is genuine reverence and a sense that people are truly seeking the presence of God. That's what the Mystery Worshippers are looking for."

The Passion and the Talmud

The ancient rabbinic text is clear about the punishment for those who twisted sacred law and misled the people of Israel.

Offenders would be stoned and then hung by their hands from two pieces of wood connected to form a "T." The Talmud once included this example from the Sanhedrin.

"On the eve of Passover they hung Jesus of Nazareth," said the passage, which was censored in the 16th century to evade the wrath of Christians. "The herald went out before him for 40 days saying, 'Jesus goes forth to be stoned, because he has practiced magic, enticed and led astray Israel. Anyone who knows anything in his favor, let him come and declare concerning him.' And they found nothing in his favor."

If armies of Jewish and Christian scholars insist on arguing about Mel Gibson's explosive movie "The Passion of the Christ," it would help if they were candid and started dealing with the hard passages in Jewish texts as well as the Christian scriptures.

At least, that's what David Klinghoffer thinks.

The Orthodox Jewish writer -- whose forthcoming book is entitled "Why the Jews Rejected Christ" -- believes these lines from the Talmud are as troubling as any included in the Christian Gospels. They are as disturbing as any image Gibson might include in his controversial epic.

The Talmudic text seems clear. Jesus clashed with Jewish leaders, debating them on the meaning of their laws. They hated him. Many wanted him dead.

It is possible, said Klinghoffer, to interpret these documents as saying that Jesus' fate rested entirely with the Jewish court. The use of language such as "enticed and led astray" indicated that Jesus may have been charged with leading his fellow Jews to worship false gods.

There are more details in this confusing drama. Writing in 12th-century Egypt, the great Jewish sage Maimonides summed up the ancient texts.

"Jesus of Nazareth," he proclaims, in his Letter to Yemen, " ... impelled people to believe that he was a prophet sent by God to clarify perplexities in the Torah, and that he was the Messiah that was predicted by each and every seer. He interpreted the Torah and its precepts in such a fashion as to lead to their total annulment, to the abolition of all its commandments and to the violation of its prohibitions.

"The sages, of blessed memory, having become aware of his plans before his reputation spread among our people, meted out fitting punishment to him."

Is that it? What role did the Romans play?

In terms of historic fact, stressed Klinghoffer, it's almost impossible to find definitive answers for such questions. But the purpose of the Jewish oral traditions that led to the Talmud was to convey religious belief, not necessarily historical facts.

"If you really must ask, 'Who is responsible for the death of Jesus?', then you can only conclude that both the Gospels and the Talmud agree that the Jewish leaders did not have the power to execute him," he said.

"Did they influence the event? The religious texts suggest that they did, the historic texts suggest that they did not. It's hard to know. ... But if Gibson is an anti-Semite, then to be consistent you would have to say that so was Maimonides."

Obviously, Klinghoffer is not spreading this information in order to fan the flames of hatred. His goal, he said, is to provoke Jewish leaders in cities such as New York and Los Angeles to strive harder to understand the views of traditional Protestants and Catholics. And it's time for liberal Christians to spend as much time talking with Orthodox Jews as with liberal Jews.

It's time to everyone to be more honest, he said.

"I don't see anything that is to be gained for Judaism by going out of our way to antagonize a Mel Gibson or to antagonize as many traditional Christians as we possibly can. I think we have been yelling 'Fire!' in a crowded theater," said Klinghoffer.

"To put it another way, I don't think it's very wise for a few Jewish leaders to try to tell millions of Christians what they are supposed to believe. Would we want some Christians to try to edit our scriptures and to tell us what we should believe?"

Terrorism, fiction and the Truth

WASHINGTON -- One of the most sobering sights that novelist Joel Rosenberg has ever seen was the glitter of Manhattan outside the windows of a Learjet a few months after Sept. 11.

Since this was a private plane, its passengers did not pass through a metal detector and have their ID cards checked. There were no security procedures at all.

"It was the middle of the night and we were flying right over Ground Zero," he said. "I remember saying at the time that there was nothing -- literally nothing -- except our own morality that could stop us from taking a private jet like this one and doing pretty much whatever we wanted to do with it. That's still true."

This moral blind spot in the war on terror has bugged Rosenberg for years. That's why his first novel -- the 2002 bestseller "The Last Jihad" -- opened with a private jet exploding into a presidential motorcade in the not-so-distant future.

Rosenberg was writing the final chapters of that book on the morning of Sept. 11. That meant he had some rewriting to do.

But those kamikaze pilots were front and center in chapter one, written in 2000. So was the author's emphasis on faith. This is what happens when a Jewish Christian who used to work for Rush Limbaugh and Israeli politico Benjamin Netanyahu starts writing thrillers about nuclear terrorism. The religious content increased in the 2003 sequel, "The Last Days," which earned Rosenberg a $1 million advance.

Many secular critics have been brutal, including the Washington Post's infamous verdict that his work was "an act of terrorism on the reader's brain."

Rosenberg is unapologetic. He said he simply started asking "what-if questions" about terrorism in America and the Middle East and tried to figure out the answers. As it turned out, the timing was right to ask big questions about good and evil.

For example, one of Rosenberg's fictional heroes is a retired Israeli spy who is convinced that American leaders cannot wage a war on terror because they no longer believe that evil is spiritual reality. Thus, they also doubt the existence of eternal, absolute truth.

This theme shouldn't be surprising, said Rosenberg, because his ancestors were Orthodox Jews who fled the pogroms of Russia. The writer's father was Jewish and his mother Methodist. Both converted as adults to evangelical Christianity, as did their son.

"Because of my own faith and my family's experiences, I truly believe in the reality of evil. ... But many, many people in this town do not," said Rosenberg, sitting in a coffee shop on Capitol Hill. "That includes lots of people in the U.S. intelligence community and the state department. They had a hard time conceiving of a 9/11 because they didn't BELIEVE it could happen.

"What we had was not so much a failure of intelligence as it was a failure of moral imagination. ... It was a worldview problem."

All Rosenberg did was take these religious convictions and blend them with what he knew about politics, economics, world affairs and intelligence work -- creating fiction. It also didn't hurt that his political roots gave him bullet-proof ties to the rulers of talk radio. During one blitz, he was on 160 radio and television programs in a month.

Some of these shows were religious, but the vast majority of them were secular. Also, his books were published by a mainstream company, rather than a religious one. This was intentional, he said, because the Christian writers he admires the most -- such as J.R.R. Tolkien and John Grisham -- dominate shelves in secular bookstores.

Now it's time to navigate the minefield of making a movie in mainstream Hollywood. Rosenberg also faces hard decisions about the content of his future books. What happens to his themes of moral absolutes and religious conversion?

"I don't know if Hollywood producers are going to want those scenes in a movie," he said. "We'll have to see. Whatever happens, it won't weaken my conviction that Christians and other conservatives have not been doing enough to tell these kinds of stories in the secular media.

"We have to try. Who knows? We may have stories that people want to hear and see. That is, if the stories are good enough."

That Christians For Dean www guy

John Paget has no doubt there are conservative Christians in cyberspace who are praying for the salvation of his soul.

This may seem like a strange use of prayer time, seeing as how he is a pro-life, evangelical Christian who is a graduate of Biola University -- once the Bible Institute of Los Angeles -- and active at the First Baptist Church in Olympia, Wash.

Then again, Paget runs a certain political website.

It's www.ChristiansForDean.info, with this cheery headline: "Good News! Christians don't have to vote Republican anymore!"

Thus, Paget gets mail. Some of it says "hallelujah" or "Thank God somebody is doing this." But many correspondents disagree.

"Lots of people assume I'm a fake, some stooge working for the campaign who is trying to fake Christians into voting for Dean," he said. "Some people think I'm all mixed up. Many others assume that I'm lost and they say they're praying that I will accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior."

Paget laughed and added: "So I feel supported in what I do. I have all these people praying for me."

Other letters urgently question Paget's core belief -- that his progressive views on peace, economics, gender and the environment can justify voting for a politician who backs abortion rights and gay rights.

Consider this email from Austin, Texas: "If you are a Christian and plan to vote for Dean, or a Democrat, you need to get on your knees and ask God for guidance because you are on the wrong track, or you do not worship the same God as do most Christians. ... They will eventually lead to the downfall of this nation. Wake up."

Actually, Paget is a documentary filmmaker and he does not work for Dean. He also noted that he is registered as an independent. Nevertheless, he is a statistical rarity. He is a morally conservative churchgoer who feels at home among Democrats. Dean and the other Democrats know they need to find more people like Paget -- quick.

It's a matter of numbers. Voter News Service found that 14 percent of 2000 voters attended religious services more than once a week. These voters backed George W. Bush by a 27-percent margin. The 14 percent of the voters who said they never attended went to Al Gore by a 29-percent margin.

These secular voters are especially crucial in major cities on both coasts, noted Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio of the City University of New York, writing in The Public Interest. But national Democratic candidates know they also need votes in the Bible Belt and heartland.

This "pew gap" is not new. While trends vary among blacks and Hispanics, they noted, the religion gap among white voters in the 1992, 1996 and 2000 presidential elections was "more important than other demographic and social cleavages. ... (It) was much larger than the gender gap and more significant than any combination of differences in education, income, occupation, age, marital status and regional groupings."

Meanwhile, the fastest growing Democratic power bloc is what Bolce and De Maio called the "anti-fundamentalist" voter. In 1996 and 2000, about a third of the total white Democratic presidential vote came from these voters that identified themselves as intensely secular or religious liberals.

As a member of the progressive United Church of Christ, Dean was preaching to these voters when he told a Houston crowd, "We've got to stop voting on guns, gods, gays and school prayer." He also told the Washington Post that his faith played a crucial role in convincing him to sign a Vermont bill legalizing civil unions for gays. "From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people," he said.

Hear those church doors slamming?

At some point, said Paget, Democratic candidates will have to learn how to reach out to traditional believers, especially those -- such as Southern evangelicals and northern Catholics -- who once were crucial to their party's fortunes.

"Democrats have to get over their hostility to Christians and realize that we are not all Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells," he said. "They have to stop taking pot-shots at us and be willing to invite us into a broader, more diverse Democratic Party."

The passion of old words and symbols

Jesuits rarely receive frantic calls from Hollywood megastars rushing to finish movies that are causing media firestorms.

But Father William Fulco is getting used to it, as Mel Gibson completes his cathartic epic "The Passion of the Christ."

While mixing dialogue the other day, Gibson hit a scene in which a man standing at a door lacked something to say. The director needed a line -- right now. Fulco's first question was unique to this project: Was this character supposed to speak Latin or first-century Aramaic?

"Mel said the camera was not on the speaker's face, so we did not need to synchronize what he said with his the movements of his mouth," said Fulco, who translated the screenplay into the two ancient languages, with English subtitles.

"The character needed to say something in Aramaic in the ballpark of, 'What do you want?' So I had him say in rather colloquial early Aramaic, 'MAH? MAH BA'EH?' That is literally, 'What? What wanting?' "

That worked.

It has been nearly two years since Fulco answered the telephone and heard a strange voice blurt out: "Hey Padre! It's Mel!"

Gibson's proposal was unusual, but fit the Jesuit's skills as a professor of ancient Mediterranean studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Fulco began digging into Hebrew texts seeking the roots of the now-dead Aramaic language, while simultaneously exploring dialects such as Syriac spoken today in tiny Christian enclaves in Iran, Syria and Turkey. He also stepped into heated academic debates between those who favor a more Italian-friendly Latin and those who reject this approach.

"I'm getting hate mail about Latin pronunciations," said Fulco. "On guy wrote who was angry about what he called 'these ecclesiastical bastardizations' of the Latin. Not only was he going to boycott the movie, he said he was going to call his high school Latin teacher and tell her to boycott the movie as well. ...

"I have to keep reminding people: This is not a documentary. We had to make artistic choices."

Legions of critics, of course, oppose the film for other reasons. Liberal Catholics and some Jewish leaders claim the script is tainted by anti-Semitism. Meanwhile, Gibson -- who has invested $25 million in the project -- has previewed early versions to rapt audiences of traditional Catholics, evangelicals and others. The film opens on 2,000 U.S. screens on Feb. 25, which is Ash Wednesday.

It is crucial to realize that the images and language at the heart of "The Passion of the Christ" flow directly out of Gibson's personal dedication to Catholicism in one of its most traditional and mysterious forms -- the 16th century Latin Mass.

"I don't go to any other services," the director told the Eternal Word Television Network. "I go to the old Tridentine Rite. That's the way that I first saw it when I was a kid. So I think that that informs one's understanding of how to transcend language. Now, initially, I didn't understand the Latin. ... But I understood the meaning and the message and what they were doing. I understood it very fully and it was very moving and emotional and efficacious, if I may say so."

The goal of the movie is to shake modern audiences by brashly juxtaposing the "sacrifice of the cross with the sacrifice of the altar -- which is the same thing," said Gibson. This ancient union of symbols and sounds has never lost its hold on him. There is, he stressed, "a lot of power in these dead languages."

Thus, the seemingly bizarre choice of Latin and Aramaic was actually part of the message. The goal of Gibson's multicultural, multilingual team was to make a statement that transcended any one time, culture and tongue.

"We didn't want another movie with Jesus as some kind of Aryan superman or Jesus as a surfer," said Fulco. "We saw one movie in which Jesus was almost this Michael Jackson kind of character. Try to imagine that. ...

"We didn't want an American Jesus, or a Japanese Jesus or a French Jesus. What we wanted was a language that allowed Jesus to be none of these nationalities, so that he can be all of them at the same time. This is a universal story."

Deja vu Nativity wars

Another Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Winter Solstice season has come and gone, but the lawyers will be cleaning up for quite a while.

Things got rough on the church-state front. Pick a zip code.

Firefighters in Glenview, Ill., were ordered to take down their station's lights, tree and Santa when neighbors said they were offended.

A pastor in Chandler, Ariz., was grieved when the public library set up a display of readings about Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, but not Christmas. Instead of adding Christian books, as the pastor requested, the library staff removed the whole display.

The American Civil Liberties Union intervened in Tallahassee, Fla., when the Jewish Chabad offered to help county commissioners buy a 22-foot menorah for the courthouse yard. Both sides threatened lawsuits, until a shopping center offered to play host.

The conflict is now global. Leaders of the Abbey National Bank in England ordered the Upminster branch to remove an offensive Nativity scene from private property. Down under, the Anglican archbishop of Sidney, Australia, protested new bans on Christmas decorations in businesses and schools.

There were waves of similar cases.

But this drama would not be complete without an election dispute in Palm Beach, Fla., where protestors are trying to unseat council members who nixed a creche on public land, next to a holiday tree and a city-owned menorah. This gets complicated. Officials offered to allow a creche in a city park next to a menorah used in rites by the Orthodox Lubavitch Center. So there could be a Nativity scene next to the "religious" menorah in the park's display area, but no Nativity scene next to the "secular" menorah on a street median.

This week, the council voted to avoid the religious symbolism wars altogether.

"It's a mess," said Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., which is involved in several Christmas cases. "The key ... is that a Christmas tree simply does not equal a menorah, because the courts have said that a Christmas tree has become a secular symbol while a menorah is a religious symbol.

"To put a more neutral spin on it, it's really clear that an evergreen holiday tree with totally secular decorations on it is not a Christian symbol."

Not all creche controversies are created equal. The most problematic involve government-owned and operated decorations on public land. In other cases, authorities may allow diverse collections of private religious decorations on public sites that are zones for free speech. With private groups, on private property, anything goes.

The case law is actually decades old, noted Marci Hamilton, a law professor at Yeshiva University. Nevertheless, many public and private leaders remain confused.

In a recent Pennsylvania case, a school's multicultural committee set up a display with a creche, a menorah and a Kwanzaa scene, she noted, writing for FindLaw's Legal Commentary. Although this display was almost certainly constitutional, a principal panicked and ordered only the creche removed.

The message in the original, diverse display, she noted, was "not one of endorsement for a particular religious viewpoint," but that government was "acknowledging the celebrations of its various citizens. And that is perfectly constitutional."

Meanwhile, there is no legal entitlement for citizens to demand that government acknowledge their particular faith, she noted. Civic leaders should try to offer equal access or do nothing. But if diverse decorations are allowed, then there "no constitutional right not to be exposed to the holidays, either," she noted. Some may be offended.

At times, the whole debate becomes a tornado of lawyers arguing about how many generic angels, non-liturgical stars and strings of secular twinkle lights beleaguered politicos must drape around religious symbols to make them safe for public consumption.

Enough is more than enough, said J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs in Washington, D.C.

"Why not just put Nativity scenes on the front lawns of every single church in town?", he asked. "Why do people think they need to get the government get involved, which shoves things into a constitutional zone where you have to start counting the number of reindeer and Santas around your Nativity scene so that everybody knows you're trying to be neutral?

"Why don't our churches just get together and handle this?"